The Truth According to Blue

by Eve Yohalem

  Which was why Jules was going to be the one to dive down and get the hunk that could possibly be part of the Golden Lion payroll instead of me. Which was why my head might erupt. Because I was super-angry-fuming mad.

  After we found the hunk, Jules and I had marked the site with a shot buoy we made with one of the weights from Dad’s dive belt, some rope, and a plastic water bottle wrapped with reflective duct tape. Now I swept the general area with the flashlight until I found the bottle.

  I killed the engine. “Check your gear,” I ordered Jules.

  I heaved the anchor overboard and let out some slack while Jules put her mask on top of her head. The oxygen tank was heavy, and she rolled it toward her instead of picking it up like she should have.

  “Hey! Be careful,” I said. “You need to keep that upright.”

  “It slipped,” Jules said.

  She started putting on the buoyancy compensator vest.

  “Don’t you want to attach the vest to the tank first?” I asked.

  “Oh. Yeah. I forgot.”

  Jules took off the vest and fiddled with the tubes and straps in a fumbling, clueless, I’ve-never-done-this-before kind of way. She caught me looking at her. “Usually my instructor does this part.”

  “Jules,” I said, trying, and failing, to keep cool. “How many times have you scuba dived?”

  “Technically—”

  “Not technically. Actually. In an ocean, not a swimming pool.”

  “Actually? Once.”

  I pressed both hands against the sides of my head.

  Once?

  I’ve dived dozens of times, before and after I got certified.

  My brain ping-ponged between bad choices.

  Jules diving once was not enough.

  Four hundred and ninety was a major blood sugar episode.

  But once was not enough.

  But 490 wasn’t because of my body; it was because of my broken pump. Which had been replaced by a new pump that was now plugged into my hip, releasing insulin in a slow, steady trickle to balance my blood sugar, which was currently a healthy pre-exercise 150. Which I happened to know because I’d tested it thirty minutes ago, and thirty minutes before that.

  Just in case.

  Otis tilted his nose down and stared up at me like a mean librarian. It’s the face he reserves for occasions like when I debate whether to jaywalk across Main Street, or the time our cove froze over and I shuffled onto the ice so I could say forevermore, and with total honesty, that I, Blue Broen, had walked on water. I hate it when he gives me that face.

  “Sit, Otis. Stay.”

  Otis obeyed, but he kept giving me the look.

  “Hand over the gear,” I said to Jules.

  She looked up from the zipper on her vest that she was trying and failing to unzip. “What? We decided I was the one who was going down!”

  “That was before I found out you don’t know how to dive.”

  “I do so know how to dive!” She clutched the vest to her chest.

  “Jules.” I held out my hand.

  “You said your eyes might bleed.”

  “Not at this depth.” I hoped.

  “Blue, it’s dangerous.” She flicked her fingers to make little exploding motions next to her eyes.

  “Jules, it’s not. Trust me.” I hoped again.

  “Fine.” She shoved the vest at me. “But don’t expect me to clean eye glop off the mask when you’re done.”

  Which was Jules’s way of saying she was worried about me. And which would have made me smile if I hadn’t been about to embark on the most exciting and tied-with-the-Ruins-for-the-most-dangerous adventure of my life.

  I strapped on my gear and checked the airflow. Depending on how nervous I was and how much I breathed, the air would last between thirty minutes and an hour. But I shouldn’t be down anywhere near that long.

  I was pretty nervous.

  And also ridiculously excited.

  I sat down on the edge of the boat and tested my blood sugar one last time. Good to go.

  The reflective tape on the water-bottle shot buoy glinted in the moonlight. I swung my legs over the side.

  “If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, call for help.”

  Jules put her hand on my shoulder. “Are you serious?”

  I shrugged her off. “Death-by-drowning serious.”

  I wedged the regulator mouthpiece between my teeth…

  …and jumped.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  True Fact: Rich people and celebrities aren’t the only ones who love Hamptons beaches. Great white sharks do too.

  I could hear my breathing through the regulator, loud and heavy. Nice and even, stay calm; not too big, save air. I swam to the water-bottle shot buoy. As long as the weight hadn’t gotten dragged by a passing boat or eaten by a monster crab, I’d be able to follow the rope right to the hunk. I felt like Goldilocks: If I gripped the rope too hard, I might move the weight; if I gripped it too lightly, I could lose it. I had to hold the rope just right.

  I exhaled and pushed the button on the vest to release air so I’d descend. Not too fast, not too slow. Goldilocks.

  Except it turns out that diving at night is nothing like diving during the day. Below water, the world grew blacker than black. I couldn’t see my body, couldn’t see the gauges. The only reason I knew which way was up was because I could feel myself going down. The bay may be vast, but I felt it shrinking around me.

  I fumbled with the clip on my waterproof flashlight. All I knew was darkness, one thin rope, and the sound of my own breathing bubbling through the regulator. Breathing that was getting faster and deeper. I had to slow down or I’d run out of air before I even got to the bottom.

  Calm down, Blue!

  Deep breaths were the worst thing I could do right now. I needed something to stop the panic, something soothing, like chamomile tea or one of those lilac-scented pillows you put over your eyes. Or a lullaby.

  Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?

  I sang the tune in my head, picturing fluffy sheep and green meadows and ladies in hoop skirts, until my breathing slowed. Unhooked the flashlight, clicked it on, and… I’d lost the rope.

  Lost. The. Rope.

  Still sinking, I swept my arms around, stretched my fingers as far as they could reach. In the silty water, I could see maybe four feet in front of me.

  Nothing.

  Think, Blue, think.

  I could go back up to the surface, find the bottle, and start over, but that would take too much air, and besides, I didn’t want Jules freaking out even more than she already was. If I just kept going the way I was going, I’d reach the sea bottom, in just another—

  Now.

  My fins touched the sand, and I quickly inflated the vest and exhaled into the regulator to stop my descent. More Goldilocks: Too much air and I’d ascend; too little and I’d sink. I fiddled until I found hover. Water, water, water, and below me, muddy sand and rocks.

  But no hunk. And no dive-belt weight.

  Shih tzu.

  I checked my gauges. Depth about twenty-six feet. Air pressure about three-quarters. Blood sugar? No idea. It could be high from nervousness or low because of exercise. Could Otis smell me through twenty-six feet of water? Was he alerting to Jules right now? I pictured him headbutting her leg over and over, bowing or high-fiving, trying to get her to keep me from dying.

  There was nothing I could do about my blood sugar except find the hunk and get back to the boat. And I had to do it fast because Jules was going to call for help in eleven minutes. I flattened out and glided slowly in a random direction, sweeping the flashlight below me. Shells, more shells. A big fish wafted by my ear.

  The hunk was at two o’clock from some seaweed. What else? You stared at it forever, taking brain pictures. Long and rectangular like a skinny black milk carton, lumpy, sticking up almost straight in the sand. What else was nearby? A rock. No, two rocks. Or maybe one big rock. Sand. Oh, and a dive-belt weight. />
  It had to be close. I’d come straight down. Unless I’d gotten pushed by the current…

  I checked the compass. I’d make a circle around my landing spot by covering pie-shaped sections, slice by slice.

  Slice one: rocks, sand, sand, more sand.

  Slice two: air pressure at fifty percent.

  Slice three: sand, sand, rubber boot.

  Half a pie: air pressure forty percent.

  Slice five: plenty of seaweed, no sign of my hunk, until—

  Slice six.

  Half-buried. Snuggled next to a dive-belt weight at two o’clock from some seaweed.

  My hunk.

  I descended just enough to touch it with a finger. It felt sturdy. I brushed away the sand. Black, hard, rough, rectangular. Heart pounding, I dug it out. Solid metal, heavy in my hands, pockmarked from salt water. I clutched the thing against my chest, my eyes welling up inside the mask. Pictures would confirm it, but I knew what I had.

  Ballast.

  I found it, Pop Pop!

  Air pressure thirty percent. So long, black sheep! I zoomed up as fast as my fins could get me there.

  As soon as I broke the surface, I spit out the regulator mouthpiece and waved my arms. “Jules! Jules!”

  “Did you get it?”

  “Yes! I got it!”

  I raced to the boat, which was only maybe ten yards away. Jules helped pull me on. Otis barked his ecstatic greeting bark and licked my face but didn’t alert, which was a huge relief.

  “What is it?” Jules demanded. “Show me!”

  I pulled the lead brick from my pocket and held it out, a giant grin stretched across my face.

  Jules took it and turned it over. “It looks like a piece of garbage.”

  “It is!”

  “Then why are you so happy?”

  “It’s not just any garbage,” I said, getting happier by the second. “It’s ballast.”

  I took it back from Jules, ran my fingers over the rough, pocked surface. After 350 years rotting away in salt water, a lead bar would look exactly like this thing I had in my hands. I know because I’ve seen pictures on the Internet. Find the ballast, find the ship.

  We sped back to my house, whooping, laughing, barking, and high-fiving. My blood sugar was normal, and I had a hunk of seventeenth-century ballast in my gear bag. It was possibly the greatest moment of my life.

  Until we went around the house to stow the gear in the garage and found Mom, Dad, Ed, and a squad car from the Southampton Police Department in the driveway.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  True Fact: It’s possible to want something so much that nothing else matters.

  “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?”

  “WHAT HAPPENED?”

  “ARE YOU OKAY?”

  “WHY ARE YOU WET?”

  The last one was Mom, after she went to hug me and then jumped back like she’d stuck a plug in a bad socket. As her eyes took in the wet suit and scuba gear, her face morphed from panic to horror to fury.

  “How about you girls tell us what’s going on here?” the police officer said, in an official Keep calm everyone voice.

  I looked over at Jules, but she was staring at the ground.

  We’d done a lot of stupid things:

  1. We snuck out of the house in the middle of the night.

  2. We went on the boat in the middle of the night.

  3. We went scuba diving in the middle of the night.

  i. It was my first time diving at night.

  ii. I had no diving buddy.

  The question was how to explain these stupid things in a way that wouldn’t get us sent to jail or grounded forever. But before I could come up with anything, Jules announced:

  “It was my fault.”

  “Jules?” Ed said with a shocked look that I was 99 percent sure was real.

  Jules pulled the elastic from her ponytail and shook out her hair like everything was perfectly normal except maybe she was slightly bored, and definitely not like she was getting questioned by the police in the middle of the night. “I was playing with my watch today on the boat, and I accidentally dropped it in the water. I told Blue we had to go get it. She didn’t want to, but I made her.”

  “Wait.” Dad held up a hand like he was stopping traffic. “You went diving alone at night for a watch?”

  “It’s a Cartier Tank,” Jules said, as if that explained everything. “And we knew exactly where it was. We even marked the place with a shot buoy. I was going to go down myself, but Blue didn’t think I had enough diving experience and she insisted. She did it to protect me.”

  Being careless with an expensive watch, coming up with a crazy scheme to get it back—the story was so totally Jules that even I kind of believed her.

  “Did either of you think about how dangerous this was?” Mom said, sounding less like herself and more like a demon had taken possession of her body and was about to burst free.

  “Blue wanted to ask you for help, but I wouldn’t let her.” Jules turned to Ed, her face as heartbreaking as a cocker spaniel at a kill shelter. “I was afraid of getting in trouble, Daddy. I didn’t want you to think I was irresponsible and be disappointed in me.”

  “Oh, babe—” Ed said, reaching to hug Jules at the same time that Mom threw her arms up and said, “IRRESPON—”

  “Look,” Dad cut in. “The most important thing is that the girls are safe. Officer, we’re sorry for dragging you out here in the middle of the night. Ed, what do you say we talk about this in the morning?”

  I only had a few seconds alone with Jules while Ed and my parents thanked the police officer. “You shouldn’t have done that,” I whispered. “It was my idea to scuba in the first place.”

  Jules shrugged. “Yeah, well, no one would ever believe you would do something so crazy. I’m used to everyone thinking I’m shallow and immature.”

  Jules could act like she didn’t care all she wanted, but I knew the truth.

  “Jules, you’re not—”

  “Blue!” Dad barked. “In the house. Now.”

  We couldn’t delay any longer. It was time for Jules to go home and for Otis and me to meet our fate. I turned and took a couple of steps toward the house. And then I wheeled around and grabbed Jules’s hand. “You’re not crazy; you’re not immature. I know what you were trying to do and I wish you hadn’t. We’re in this together, got it?”

  Jules just nodded.

  Otis and I followed Mom and Dad inside to the kitchen. Dad and I sat at the table; Mom stood next to the counter with her arms crossed. I shivered even though the night was warm and Otis was lying on my feet.

  “My blood sugar’s normal,” I said before they could ask. “I tested on the boat.”

  Dad scrubbed his face with his hand. “Blue, what were you thinking?”

  All the lies I’d been telling them were piled up between us like the biggest pyramid in Egypt: the fact that I hadn’t even started my science project, that I’d been secretly treasure hunting, that the dive was all my idea. Now was the time to tell the truth.

  But even now all I could think about was the ballast in my gear bag and How soon can I get back on the water? If I told my parents the truth, the answer would be never.

  “I wasn’t thinking,” I finally said. “I just… wasn’t.”

  “Aw, forget it, Blue.” Dad pushed back from the table. “Just go to bed.”

  Otis and I went up to my room, and I sat on the edge of my bed in the dark, still in my wet suit. The clock said 2:55 AM.

  I pulled the ballast out of my gear bag. Held it in both hands. Felt its weight, its roughness like honeycomb. Three hundred and fifty years ago, some sailor unloaded this block of lead—smooth and new—from a sack or a cart and carefully set it down in the bottom of a ship next to dozens of other lead blocks just like it. The boat was made of wood. Below deck the ceilings were so low you couldn’t stand up all the way. Up top were big square sails sewn from canvas and waterproofed with pine tar. Maybe the sailor died on that tri
p—maybe he got sick or got killed in battle or fell overboard when the ship hit the rocks. Maybe he died with no children, and that was the end of him. Maybe he lived and had ten kids, and I go to school with some of their descendants. Or maybe that sailor was my very own great-times-twelve-grandfather Abraham Broen.

  This ballast meant there was more down there. Like the wreck of the ship and all her cargo. It meant my family stories were true.

  Why did the Great-Times-Twelves have the Golden Lion payroll, and what did they do to get it? Did they steal it—and if they stole it, was it rightfully mine? What was I willing to do? I was willing to break the law twice—once by entering (and installing a camera on) the Windfall and once by going to the Ruins. I was willing to bring Otis to the Ruins, where he got hurt; to lie to my parents over and over again; to do something dangerous and let Jules take the fall for it.

  I was willing to risk our lives.

  Otis whined softly and dropped a pair of pajamas on the bed.

  “Am I a bad person?” I asked him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  True Fact: Sometimes bad skips worse and goes straight to total catastrophe.

  Mom and Dad were still home when I got up the next morning. We went into the kitchen, where Dad and I sat at the table, Otis lay on my feet, and Mom stood by the counter with her arms crossed, just like last night. Except for the sun being up, it was like the five hours since the driveway showdown hadn’t even happened.

  Dad said, “Mom and I have talked and we both agree: Jules didn’t make you do anything last night. You made your own decisions every step of the way, and every decision you made was lousy. No watch, no matter how expensive, is worth more than your life or your friend’s life. And you know what, Blue? You knew that. You knew better.”

  Dad paused so I could say something. I nodded once to show him I agreed. “I know. I’m really sorry.”

  “I’m glad you’re sorry, but sorry isn’t enough,” he went on. “There have to be consequences for your actions.”

  “I understand.” I sat up straight. “No TV, no Internet—”